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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper uses Leon Trotsky’s theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) in order to transcend both globalising and methodologically nationalist theories of the global political economy. While uneven development theorists working in economic geography have demonstrated the logical corollary of capitalist development and the completion of the world market in the persistence of geographic unevenness, they fail to specify or problematise the role of states in this process. This leads to an ambiguity about why the states system has persisted under conditions of deep economic integration across states. State theorists, meanwhile, tend to exclude the world market and system of states as conditioning factors in state (trans)formation. For this reason, much state theory offers only a contingent account of the relationship between patterns of capital accumulation and states’ institutional forms. Geopolitical economy, with its focus on the competitive interrelations between states as constitutive of capitalist value relations, is well placed to transcend the pitfalls of these twin perspectives by closely engaging with the theory of UCD. UCD provides a nonreductionist means of integrating global processes of capital accumulation with their distinctive and peculiar national mediations. A research programme is developed to operationalise UCD for purposes of concrete research – something lacking from recent development in the field.

Evaluates the interplay between market forces and political realities as the economies of Europe become part of a new global order. Capital is becoming more mobile and business increasingly international and borderless. Modern management seek opportunities to reduce costs of production. The transnational firm (TNC), a globally integrated organizational network, has emerged in this global search for low‐cost production bases. Consequently the realm of European economic policy analysis is now very much couched within a political economy dimension which is determining the direction of economic activity at the global level with ramifications for the European economy and its nation‐states. The hallmarks of that political dimension include the interrelationships between sovereign governments and the transnational corporations and the creation of geo‐political entities like the European Union. Impelled by global competition and the power of business, the drive towards European integration has furnished much‐needed debate on the effectiveness of indigenous government policies on their respective economies and on the relatively greater impact of modern corporations on the economy.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the contradictory trends in the development of the modern world economic system. The relevance of the topic is due to the multifaceted and ambiguous nature of regionalization, glocalization and fragmentation tendencies formed as the most important trends in the crisis of globalism.

Based on the classical methods of historical and functional analysis, system approach and comparative studies, the authors realized the research potential of modern methodological tools, alternative forecasting methods and comparative modeling, as well as special methods of economic globalistics and global political economy. Heuristic possibilities of the methodological–theoretical concept of glocalization of international economic relations are used.

New directions and opportunities for attaining regional and global geo-economic leadership are revealed and demonstrated. It is justified that glocalization does not lead to economic isolation in previously known historical forms but to priority realization of the interests of local economic entities included in the processes of globalization and subordinated to its patterns. Glocalization causes an increase in the role of local factors in the global development of the society, in particular of the global economy.

It is established that the so-called equilibrium zones (enjoying the advantages of an intermediary role in the interrelationships of large areas of the world economy, which are headed by geo-economic leaders) possess the potential for novelty in the dynamics of a globalizing economy. The article predicts the formation of a multidimensional and multilevel geo-economic multipolarity due to the reshaping of the global system of leadership in the world economy and due to the contradictory competitive relationships of its main centers.

The article provides a comparative critique of the financial underpinnings of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the recent wave of financial crises. The collapse of the financial systems in many developing nations, the bankruptcies in the Anglo-Saxon corporate sectors and a threat of more sovereign defaults on behalf of emerging markets suggest that the current wave of global financial fragility and recession rivals that of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The paper examines key elements that account for the crisis-prone nature of global capitalism: the political discipline of neo-liberalism, debt-driven expansion of the privatised financial markets, and the profound disarticulation of the financial and real economies. These factors suggests that the risk of a global depression is by no means hypothetical, and unless effective and collaborative efforts are made to tame the inherently unstable regime of global finance, even major world economies are faced with a prolonged period of financial turbulence and economic stagnation. The paper concludes by pondering the possibility of a paradigmatic shift in the transnational political consensus that can prevent a global repetition of the 1930s. While the increased awareness of financial instability and crisis may indeed prompt some ad hoc adjustments in national and foreign economic policies of major capitalist powers, in the long run these measures will be insufficient to prevent a major financial and economic disaster.

The purpose of this study is to explain the discipline of political economy in terms of the theory of conflict and conflict resolution on social matters. Such a theory arises substantively from the generalized and unique methodological worldview of unity of knowledge found in the Islamic epistemological case.

This paper simply uses this epistemic background without dwelling in details of the Islamic methodological worldview of unity of knowledge. Among the central social issues examined in this paper is that of preservation of peace in terms of pressing issues that complement with the concept of well-being.

The imminent study of political economy of socioeconomic development and United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is explained as a broader concept of peace as organic relational balance between the good and true pursuits of life in terms of common global well-being. Within this purview, analytical examination is made of various theoretical precepts. Within the same goal of peaceful coexistence and global conflict resolution, the official stand of Malaysia in global peace is enunciated.

The paper conveys a critical conceptual idea to debate the scope and approach of political economy of peace, development and law matters. The results of the approach used in this study constitute a major contribution of this paper to scholarship in general and acts as a critique of developmental thought of political economy of peace and law.

The popular uprising in Sri Lanka on July 9th, 2022, led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country. It represented a stunning culmination of a wave of protests during the recent past. The proximate cause of the uprising was the worst economic crisis that Sri Lanka had experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The breakdown was long in the making since the island nation became the first country in South Asia to take the neoliberal turn in the late 1970s. The dramatic collapse was catalyzed by a sovereign debt crisis with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, like all great revolts, it has led to a counter revolution by the ruling class, including the reconfiguration of the old regime.

We examine the tremendous consequences of recent events, both in terms of Sri Lanka's long history of struggles involving working people and the global unravelling underway. We explore whether Sri Lanka is a harbinger of more global political economic changes to come. The process includes the possibility of systemic resistance to financialization in the scores of countries in the Global South experiencing tremendous debt distress. In this regard, we ask whether Sri Lanka's revolt could yet become a revolution. To frame the potential implications, we turn to a deeper interrogation of classic Marxist theories and concepts.

The transformations in the existing forms of governmentality and power regimes are deeply rooted within the political economy of advanced neoliberalism, having profound implications in the governance matrix. The new rationalities and instrumentalities of governance involve ‘governing without government’ (Rhodes, 1996) following the delegitimisation and deconstruction of the Keynesian Welfare State and the gradual enactment of what Jessop (2002) calls the Schumpeterian Competition State. This chapter throws open the play field for competing standpoints on governing the mega corporates. Various theorists consider that there is emptiness within the existing global regulatory armoury concerning the operational activities of TNCs. The convolution of ‘steering’ in this poly-centred, globalised societies with its innate uncertainty makes it tricky to keep an eye on the fix of ‘who actually steers whom’ and ‘with what means’. There also appears to be huge disinclination to spot systemic technical description of the evolving modern institutional structure of economic regulation in a composite and practical manner. Thus, the complexity of international issues, their overlapping nature and the turmoil within the arena in which they surface defy tidy theorizing about effective supervision.

This brings in the wider questions dealt with in the chapter – Is globalisation then a product of material conditions of fundamental technical and economic change or is it collective construct of an artifact of the means we have preferred to arrange political and economic activity? The new reflexive, self-regulatory and horizontal spaces of governance are getting modelled following the logic of competitive market relations whereby multiple formally equal actors (acting or aspiring to act as sources of authority) consult, trade and compete over the deployment of various instruments of authority both intrinsically and in their relations with each other (Shamir, 2008). The chapter also looks into these messy and fluid intersections to situate the key actors at the heart of processes of ‘rearticulation’ and ‘recalibration’ of different modes of governance which operates through a somewhat fuzzy amalgamation of the terrain by corporates, state hierarchy and networks all calibrating and competing to pull off the finest probable’s in metagovernance landscape. Unambiguously, this chapter seeks to elaborate on an institutional-discursive conceptualization of governance while stitching in and out of the complex terrain a weave of governances for modern leviathan – the global corporates.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

This article aims to provide a critical understanding of contextual issues surrounding international business from a political economy of communication perspective.

The approach is based in classical dialectics and proceeds from a Marxian perspective. It includes a literature review of major theorists in political economy of communication and an analysis of present institutional relationships that frame international business in the context of corporatism.

The main argument is that current practices that dominate international business can no longer be considered as any kind of capitalism and that political economy of communication is necessary for comprehending this system. Current business practices are a form of corporatism in which ownership is separated from control, business is separated from industry, and the idea of a “going concern” is subject to “overriding concerns”. To understand the implications of these factors, political economy of communication needs new theories of value, labour, mediation, and meaning.

The work is limited by the current pace of change, by alternative, non‐Marxist definitions of capitalism which are not taken into account here, and by the variegated nature of global business practices. The work is limited to dominant practices and definitive relationships.

The paper provides a useful perspective for understanding the future direction of international business, specifically in terms of communication, culture, and understandings of value.

This paper offers an alternative, non‐capitalistic view of “globalisation” within a Marxist framework and proposes a new theoretical and analytical synthesis for political economy of communication.